Mark him down as undecided
"Artomatic 2004: Hanging is Too Good For It" is the title of Blake Gopnik's skewering of this year's Artomatic exhibition in today's Washington Post. An accompanying photo is captioned "Art that should be drawn - and quartered." I have to admit that these quality puns and the over-the-top nature of the piece had me chuckling - for a bit. I've yet to experience Artomatic for myself in my two-plus years in the District, and I'm not sure whether I'll manage to check it out this year either. I do think it's great to have an art exhibition that's basically open to anyone, though I'm willing to concede that such a display is bound to contain a number of works that even my untrained eye could identify as plainly bad. But so what? Gopnik's piece drips with elitism and ignores the fundamental problem of the commodification of art, which creates the problem of competition for space and attention between "high," "serious" art and "low," "amateur" art that he expends precious ink fretting over.
Any time I've found myself in a discussion about the nature of art (visual, musical, etc.), I've enjoyed the complexities involved in arguing about what it is, what it isn't, what it's worth, who makes it, what's their intent, what should be their intent, and so on. (My favorite summary of the topic comes from Marcel Duchamp: "The only thing that is not art is inattention.") There are thoughtful points to be made in favor of evaluating art "objectively" (though my use of quote marks here should make it clear that I'm a partisan of subjectivity), but you won't find them in M. Gopnik's rant:
Imagine living in Renaissance Florence and telling one of your Medici pals that you were going to have the family altarpiece painted by Joe Blow the baker, who felt like giving it a try. It would have seemed a joke. An Artomatic would have seemed sheer lunacy.
Other examples of sheer lunacy in 16th century Europe? Oh, I don't know... democracy, a heliocentric universe, the automobile...
I encourage folks to stop by the exhibit and form opinions (reasonable ones, for Christ's sake) of their own. Artomatic opens tomorrow, and you can find out more about it here.
Any time I've found myself in a discussion about the nature of art (visual, musical, etc.), I've enjoyed the complexities involved in arguing about what it is, what it isn't, what it's worth, who makes it, what's their intent, what should be their intent, and so on. (My favorite summary of the topic comes from Marcel Duchamp: "The only thing that is not art is inattention.") There are thoughtful points to be made in favor of evaluating art "objectively" (though my use of quote marks here should make it clear that I'm a partisan of subjectivity), but you won't find them in M. Gopnik's rant:
Imagine living in Renaissance Florence and telling one of your Medici pals that you were going to have the family altarpiece painted by Joe Blow the baker, who felt like giving it a try. It would have seemed a joke. An Artomatic would have seemed sheer lunacy.
Other examples of sheer lunacy in 16th century Europe? Oh, I don't know... democracy, a heliocentric universe, the automobile...
I encourage folks to stop by the exhibit and form opinions (reasonable ones, for Christ's sake) of their own. Artomatic opens tomorrow, and you can find out more about it here.
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